Primetime Emmy Awards

The ballots for the 2014 Primetime Emmy nominations were released on the 16th, igniting a firestorm of “what ifs” amid speculation along the lines of WTF? Debate on the merits of the various shows and their actors and directors will begin in earnest after July 10th, when the nominees will be officially announced. However, for now, maybe we should pay some attention to the nominees that definitely will not make the cut, as in not even a bean’s chance of being noticed in a bowl of gumbo.

First of all, since when does a less than 60-second appearance of a movie star on a TV show grant them some sort of carte blanche to be nominated for Outstanding Guest Actor? This year we have two diametrically opposed actors who did one short and one shorter cameo on a comedy, yet they were nominated as if they deserved the nomination because they descended from Mount Olympus of film to the small screen. Bill Murray, while ever-popular for being Bill Murray, was nominated for his 40 second spot on the pilot episode of Amazon Instant Video’s comedy “Alpha House. It’s not that the role was that good. The nomination is more for the fact that he was on the show at all, even for less than a minute.